Alex Angell
alex_angell@berkeley.k12.ca.us
Best way to contact: Email

Before he became a teacher, Alex Angell spent 18 years as an investment advisor in the international capital markets. He chose teaching as a second career partly because he is “fascinated by history and the challenge of teaching it, and partly out of a sense of civic virtue – to give something back to my community.” Angell asks, “If we don’t tell our children the stories, how are they going to know?”

Angell sees his teaching style as "old school” in that it’s teacher centered. He regards himself not as a Historian but as a “Storyteller,” passing on the accumulated knowledge of our history. Angell looks to give his students what he calls “a thorough grounding in ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ - World History.” He helps students develop the literary skills they need to be able to express an intelligent opinion: a point of view which makes reference to specific facts and events. Angell’s students use examples from the curriculum to identify the causal relationships between seemingly unrelated events.

Angell says an added bonus to teaching for him is being able to return each summer to the island of Kaphalonia with his wife, who is Greek. There he spends his time relaxing, playing guitar, working on curriculum for the upcoming year, and grilling goats.

He went to The Putney School and UC Santa Cruz, where he earned a B.A. in History.

Matt Carton has been teaching at Berkeley High School since 2002. Sophomores love to tell the story about how Carton stands in front of the class on their first day and exclaims, “I hate sophomores!” They soon learn that despite this claim, he loves teaching sophomores (and students in other grades as well) and he does so with boundless enthusiasm and considerable panache.

Carton has a B.A. in English Literature and a California Secondary Credential from San Francisco State University. He went to a large suburban high school in Bakersfield, where his team took third place in the California State Academic Decathlon his senior year. That triumph is Carton’s favorite memory of his time at West High.

Carton identifies Lawrence of Arabia as his favorite movie and William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy as his favorite book.

Samantha Godbey has a B.A. in Italian from Yale University and an M.A. in Education from UC Berkeley. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, Godbey taught in a secondary school in a village near Vladivostok, in the Russian Far East. She began teaching at BHS in 2005.

Godbey’s tastes in literature cover a wide range, from dense Russian novels to teen fiction. She says her recent enthusiasms have been the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and rereading the Ender’s Game quartet.

Godbey enjoys singing, cooking, and riding her bicycle both for transportation and recreation.

Amanda Green describes her approach to teaching as eclectic. “I believe all of my students come to me with their own unique set of knowledge, skills, and talent. My goal as a teacher is to meet them where they are and help them be successful as they define it.”

After starting a small press publishing company and editing a literary magazine, Green realized she wanted to work with young writers. High school teaching seemed the perfect place to do so. Her work with the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop in San Francisco also drew her to teaching, as she became convinced she could do the most useful work for social justice as a teacher. What she likes most about teaching at BHS is “the entirely freaky population of people,” who do not fit easily into a standard mold.

Green’s favorite memory of her own high school experience was graduating from it. She explains, “I went to an extremely small public school in rural New York after growing up on a farm. Outside of sports and theater there was not much to do besides work. I got myself to a city as quickly as possible.”

Green received her B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1998, where she double majored in Film Studies and English. She earned her Masters degree from San Francisco State University in 2007. She has been teaching at BHS since 2003.

Her favorite movies include The Wild Bunch, Full Metal Jacket, Brick, Donnie Darko, City of God, Out of the Past, and Bunny Lake is Missing. Favorite books include Huck Finn, When the Elephants Dance, Fahrenheit 451, The Dispossessed, The Gone People, Un Lun Dun, and The Cat in the Hat.

She spends her summers training in the martial arts, traveling, and being a better friend.

Alan Miller says he has a “gossipy, tabloid approach” to literature. He believes in applying all the tools of pop psychology to the printed word. Since he was himself a student of the classics, he brings them into the classroom, then tears them apart and humanizes them. Miller has a B.A. from Amherst College and a Teaching Credential from San Francisco State University. He has taught at BHS since 1991.

Miller, who is a member of the Negotiating Team for the Berkeley Federation of Teachers says he entered the teaching profession reluctantly. “I thought it was an impossible job, and I was right.” He enjoys working with students, but he believes teachers are colossally under compensated despite recent improvements at BHS.

Miller attended what he describes as “the prestigious private Latin School of Chicago.” He says his graduating class was “so small I could do anything I wanted, and so I did. I played basketball for four years, football for one, soccer for three; acted in four plays, mostly large parts; painted and sketched and wrote poetry prolifically; served on various political bodies.” Miller says being the Senior Prefect was probably the highlight of his high school days.

Miller’s favorite book is Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. His list of heroes includes Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs, Barry Fike, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison, Stephen Dobyns, Thomasine Wilson, Jim Slemp, and “anyone working to better conditions in public schools.” Before he became a teacher, Miller was a census employee, “one of those folks with the little calculators on the hip.” He has appeared in several documentaries, he has published poetry, and organized literary fundraisers across the country.

Tim Moellering says he thought about becoming a rock star, but when Sting gave up teaching to become a rock star, he chose to even things out: “I decided I could give up becoming a rock star to become a teacher.” He has a B.A. in History and Single Subject Credentials in History and English from UC Berkeley. He has been teaching since 1980 and has taught at BHS since 2002.

Moellering tries to create a comfortable classroom environment where students want to be. He believes, “The rest will fall into place because all students want to learn.” The diversity at BHS is what Moellering likes best about teaching here.

His favorite book is Catch 22, and his favorite movie is The Life of Brian. Moellering enjoys listening to music, studying history, and coaching.

When asked to reveal something that people would be surprised to learn about him, Moellering offered an ironic recollection from his own educational experiences. “ I used to cut school constantly when I went to King, along with several other friends, all of whom became teachers.”

Leslie Tebbe
lestebbe@mindspring.com
Best way to contact: Email, or by phone at 510-594-8480

Leslie Tebbe began teaching at Berkeley High in 2004, as a student teacher. She says she loves the complexity of BHS students, and their understanding of the world around them. “I came to Berkeley High because I had met a number of adults in my life who had gone to BHS, and they had a certain flair that was truly unique. Now I see why. It is an incredible community, with incredible parents, that thrives off of its proximity to lives different than its own.”

Tebbe describes her teaching style as very rigorous. She says her classroom is very structured, with clear, predictable expectations. She says she expects students to think critically and to be proactive, diligent, and invested.

Tebbe says her own experience in high school influenced her decision to become a teacher. “I believe that I struggled unnecessarily in high school, especially with writing. Therefore, I wanted to impart strategies I’ve discovered to avoid feeling unprepared for or incapable of, higher level work. I don’t think students need to wait until college to do really impressive thinking that motivates them and makes them passionate about education. This kind of passion, in turn, helps writing skills develop.”

Tebbe attended a high school as large as BHS, and she says she appreciated the anonymity and the opportunity to experience different perspectives that a school of this size provides. She says this includes the opportunity “to be an observer, and to recognize both the differences and similarities between people or varying backgrounds. And then, to participate, through social interaction, in worlds vastly different form our own.”

Faulkner and Steinbeck are among Tebbe’s favorite authors. Favorite movies include Adaptation, The Thin Man series, The Graduate, and The 400 Blows. Tebbe grew up singing in church choirs, and very much misses that experience. She says her job has greatly diminished her hobbies, and she tends to love simple things, like going to the farmer’s market, having a long dinner with friends, listening to music, or watching a great movie. She spends time in the summers with her extensive family, many of whom live on the East Coast.

Madalyn Theodore began her teaching career at BHS in the mid 1990’s. She describes her teaching style as open, creative, academic, and fun. She became a high school teacher because she enjoys “being around an age group that has so much potential.”

Theodore says her heroes include her grandmother, her husband, Emmett and Mamie Till, and Chef Ramsay. She likes reading the Classics, and she loves animation. She enjoys cooking, sleeping, and reading during the summer.

Theodore has a B.A. from the University of Illinois and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

For Joanna Vilensky, the best part of teaching at BHS is the students. “There is so much you can learn from all the kids at BHS. Their minds are just waking up to the realities of the world and it’s fun to see things through their eyes.”

Vilensky worked in both the non-profit sector in DC and the for-profit sector in Chicago before she realized she was best suited for a career in education. She says the book Nicholas and Alexandra inspired her to become a history teacher. Vilensky says it’s important to get students interested in the stories that make up history and to show them that history is fun. She wants her students to be able to understand how events are connected to each other, and to understand why the world is the way it is today.

Vilensky went to a small, suburban high school in Columbus, Ohio, where she was a member of the swim team and worked on the student newspaper. She has a B.A. from Kenyon College, where she was a Religious Studies major, an M.A. in Religion from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. in Education from Northwestern University.

Her hobbies are working out, scuba diving, traveling, reading, camping, and writing. She has lived in Columbus, Ohio; Copenhagen, Denmark; Israel; Chicago; and now Oakland.

Vilensky says her hero is her grandfather. “He worked selling cars until he was 82. When he retired, he decided to go to college, and had my parents type his papers. He was the coolest.”

Carolyn Wilson-Scott has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Teaching from Stanford University. She has been teaching at Berkeley High since 2006.

Wilson-Scott says she loves teaching the senior Short Story course “because writing, especially creative writing, has been my passion for as long as I can remember.” She is currently at work on a novel.

Wilson-Scott was the mixed doubles ping-pong champion in the Kansai region of Japan when she was a senior in high school. She points out, “The accomplishment was made all the more meaningful by the fact that there was a grand total of one other team in the competition.”